Just for fun, I offer you a shade of odds about the chances of a certain character rising from a state of genteel poverty to achieve enduring fame as an entertainer. You sensibly decline. Read the story and find out why....

An account of what happened after I accepted an invitation from the Guangxi Education Ministry (China) to teach in the English Department of a Teachers' College in a remote mountain region: the only foreigner in a County of over half a million Chinese.